EXPLAINER
Open Caption vs Closed Caption
Open caption vs closed caption comes down to one question: can the viewer switch them off? Everything else follows from that.
The difference in one line
Open captions are burned into the video. They are part of the image, always visible, and cannot be turned off.
Closed captions are a separate track. The player draws them over the video, and the viewer can toggle, restyle or translate them.
When open captions are the right choice
- Social feeds that autoplay muted. Most viewers never tap the caption control, so burned-in text is the only text they will see.
- Platforms with no caption support. If there is nowhere to upload a track, open captions are your only option.
- Styling that matters. Burned-in captions look exactly as you designed them on every device.
When closed captions win
- Accessibility compliance. Standards generally expect a caption track the viewer can control.
- Search. Platforms read caption tracks as text; they cannot read pixels.
- Translation. One track can be machine-translated into many languages. Burned-in text cannot.
- Reframing. Burned-in captions get cropped when a 16:9 video is cut to 9:16. See size of videos on YouTube.
What most creators actually do
Both. A closed caption track for accessibility and search, plus burned-in captions on the short-form cut where autoplay is muted and nobody taps anything.
Open Caption vs Closed Caption FAQ
Do open captions hurt SEO?
They do not help it. Search engines read caption tracks as text and cannot read words baked into pixels, so a closed caption track is what gets indexed.
Are subtitles the same as captions?
Not quite. Subtitles assume the viewer can hear and translate dialogue; captions also describe relevant sound, for viewers who cannot hear it.